Max's Visit to Salisbury

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 84

Wow--what an exciting two days we have had a Salisbury with Max coming to our science fair and then spending the day talking with classes. The students all loved finally meeting him and it was great to hear him interact with the classes about this PARTNERS project and other future projects in the arctic.

Max arrived yesterday afternoon at about 2:30 p.m. and we spent the afternoon getting to know each other, talking about the trip to the arctic and ideas for integration. We prepared what we were going to do with the kids the next day and then went to dinner with my principal and another teacher from my school.

Ironically, during dinner, the sub who is filling in for me was also eating dinner so she got to meet Max and we talked a little bit about what we were thinking of doing while we are gone. I will be meeting with her again soon to show her the web page and talk more in depth about plans to communicate and mimick the project in Salisbury while we are in Siberia.

Also, during dinner there was a woman, who was unbeknownst to us, listening in on our conversation, because as we got up to leave she said, "I'm sorry, but I have to know where you are going." We told her and she was thrilled AND she was a second grade teacher. I gave her the TREC address and I am going to be in contact with her to get her class involved too. She works in a completely different school district so this will be a great way to get the project to be even bigger!

After dinner we headed back to the science fair, and I spent most the evening talking to parents and showing off the TREC web page while Max got to interact with the students and probe them about their projects. It was great fun for all, I was able to get more parents knowledgable about the project and the kids had fun as someone "famous" checked out their work.

Then, we were off to the school board meeting. I was scheduled to present to the schoolboard anyway about TREC, so having Max there was a great benefit. The schoolboard was very impressed and are eager to be part of the trip as well. I am going to be sending out lots of business cards with the TREC address on it!

We finally made it home at about 9:00 p.m. and we got to sit back and relax for a bit at my home. This gave us a chance to chat a little more and talk more about the logistics of the trip (or at least what we know of them at this time).

Today, Max presented to the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. The kids had so many questions that Max had to stop answering them for about 20 minutes so that he could show some photographs from a powerpoint presentation. Max had brought in some great visuals and artifacts from his past trips to the arctic which really engaged the students. Max also introduced a new project that he is working on and asked the students to start thinking about data that he presented. Students immediately started asking some great, relevant questions and are eagar to get the data in their hands to examine it some more.

When we had a chance to breath, we had the opportunity to look through some local and national science curriculum books to see how the "complex" science that we are going to be doing on the Lena this spring is connected to the "basic" science that fourth, fifth and sixth graders are learning. I am looking forward to figuring out ways to use this "real life" experience to connect the life, Earth, and physical science curriculums that I am responsible for teaching. This trip and the communication that I hope to keep up with Max is going to provide me with a wonderful way to do that. We also talked about ways to broaden the scope of impact of the project.

Getting to know Max and work with him the last two days has made me feel really lucky to have gotten matched up with such a fantastically engaging scientist and has gotten both me, my students, and the community here at Salisbury super excited for the next two months! It is going to be great!